Title: Sarah Lyon’s New Book: Coffee and Community: Maya Farmers and Fair Trade Markets
Contact: Cheyenne Hohman
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Anthropology professor Sarah Lyon’s New Book: Coffee and Community: Maya Farmers and Fair Trade Markets has just been released.



Lyon's ethnographic analysis of fair-trade coffee analyzes the collective action and combined efforts of fair-trade network participants to construct a new economic reality. Focusing on La Voz Que Clama en el Desierto, a cooperative in San Juan la Laguna, Guatemala, and its relationships with coffee roasters, importers, and certifiers in the United States, "Coffee and Community" argues that while fair trade does benefit small coffee-farming communities, it is more flawed than advocates and scholars have acknowledged.



Through ethnographic fieldwork with the farmers and by following the product, fair trade can be understood and modified to be more equitable.
Article Date: 3/22/2011